Verno wrote on May 1, 2012, 10:11:Speaking of which, any bets on when after playing the beta? A friend of mine said he could see it coming out after summer but from what a few people here said it sounds like there is still a lot of content tuning to be done.

I'm expecting September, myself, maybe even later. There's still whole areas not included in the beta, including two races, their home cities (which are huge) and their starting areas. They'll definitely need testing once they're done.

There's still work to be done on the pet AI, and balancing them out somewhat. Most of the pets die so fast, rangers were simply leaving them 'defeated' all the time. At first I was wondering what the hell was wrong with the Rangers that they didn't want their pets up to do more damage. Then I played a Ranger, and man that was frustrating. Bear seemed to survive decently, but anything else literally 'died' EVERY SINGLE FIGHT. After a while I understood why they stopped bothering to res their pet.

The Melee combat as stated previously still needs tuning, though I've read some posts from others talking about it that made a lot of sense to me. Most people are tuned to the idea that "I'm a DPS, so I need DPS stats." and completely eschewed the idea of using gear with Toughness or Vitality on it, since those are traditionally 'tank' stats. But since there's no tanks in the game... who are they for then? Some people had said when they started stacking some Toughness and Vitality gear on their Warriors, they had much less trouble with getting two-shotted. Have to admit, as silly as it sounds, even though I was dying left right and center in melee on my thief, it never occurred to me that I might need some defensive stats on my gear. I just kept stacking that precision and power and had a ranged weapon set to use whenever I was outnumbered in combat.

They still need to tweak the amount of XP gained so it's not so much of a grind that you have to repeat things or go to different starter zones just to get to the level to move on to the next area.

They definitely need to fix the overflow system to keep groups together. Found out in the last two hours of the beta that if you just kept trying trying to leave a major city over and over, hitting queue or cancel instead of accepting the option to overflow, it eventually put you both in the proper server. Buggy and annoying, but at least I got a couple hours playing with my friends after being frustrated by the inability to do so most of the weekend.

There's also performance tuning to be done. I had no issues myself after the server patch/restart on saturday that pretty much eliminated the lag problems I was having previous to that.

Point being, still much work to be done. It's by no means a release candidate in it's current state, and depending on how far along they are with the rest of the content, it's almost definitely more than 3 months away.

It's impossible to separate the people who are just stupid with their computers from parts of the game that need optimization so there is really no point in arguing about it fellas. It's a beta so whatever, performance might all over the place. I didn't complain when I had a few crashes with D3, Blizzard released a few patches and they were gone. That comes up in pretty much every thread and it's just due to the nature of the PC platform.

Given how well Guild Wars performed I'm sure the ArenaNet will iron things out in time for release. Speaking of which, any bets on when after playing the beta? A friend of mine said he could see it coming out after summer but from what a few people here said it sounds like there is still a lot of content tuning to be done.

nin wrote on May 1, 2012, 09:44:It made perfect sense to me. They say the game is CPU bound right now (when you blame it on local problems), and that overclocking hurts performance (which you were doing, but bragging about how your overclock made it faster). I do find it funny I point out twice you were incorrect, and you keep saying "yeah, but I'm right anyway".

Whatever. I'm done pointing out your mistakes.

Increasing clock speed would help alleviate a problem where you were CPU bound. If the game is CPU bound then overclocking the GPU wouldn't affect performance negatively as the post claims. I wasn't bragging, I just said the statement makes a bit more sense in that context.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to blame localized problems, that's my bad. But you're quoting a generic performance post that exists with pretty much every beta as gospel. I am sure there are optimizations to be made and I'm also sure there are people experiencing problems of their own making, that's how these things normally go. My performance was pretty good all things considered

It made perfect sense to me. They say the game is CPU bound right now (when you blame it on local problems), and that overclocking hurts performance (which you were doing, but bragging about how your overclock made it faster).

I do find it funny I point out twice you were incorrect, and you keep saying "yeah, but I'm right anyway".

But I think if that's all you're seeing it as, you'll have a hard time understanding what's compelling in the game. Taking a fort from the centaur feels different than smashing up an ogre camp. Defeating a huge flame golem feels different than a rampaging giant boar. You're in a new area with new enemies and a new story and personally, that let me get past the underlying coding and enjoy the experience. I wasn't thinking, "oh another #2," I was thinking, "how do I beat this centaur chief?" and "I wonder what will happen once we take the camp."

I don't think it's for everyone, but it's definitely a significant improvement over any static or public quest system I've seen.

Interesting, that sounds like exactly what I was looking for - some nuance and difference between each event. Thanks for the write up, I'm sold. I'll make sure I don't miss the next beta event.

Verno wrote on May 1, 2012, 09:00:I'm curious, what are the events and stuff like? Is it generic kill mobs type stuff or is there a bit more variety? I'm having a hard time imagining someone doing more than the Rift style crap but would love to hear if ANet went any further creatively in quest design.

There's sort of 2-3 in an area... and 1 is "dynamic".

When you go to a heart shaped area, there's an NPC that needs something done. It usually involves 2 or 3 optional things to complete. Like one of the starter areas for the Norn, you can either get fish out of a fish trap and feed the bear cubs, disable bear traps that appear in the area, or kill off mobs that are hunting the bears in the area.

As you are working on that... a dynamic event may trigger where tons of these humanoid mobs try to invade, and you have to help defend the bears. (To give a bit of background, when you start a Norn Character, there are 4 animals that are revered, Raven, Bear, Wolf, and Snow Leopard... so 4 of the heart areas in the starter zone involve those as part of the Norn Lore).

A heart Area, is just a location on the map. when you complete "helping out" the NPC in that area, the heart becomes solid on the map.

Now, some of the areas have 2 states for the dynamic event. The invading mobs have already taken over, and you need to clear them out to get things back to normal... or things are normal and the invading mobs are about to attack when the event starts. A combination of the amount of people in the area and sometimes doing the "heart area" quest triggers the dynamic event. It kind of depends on the area. Not super different from each other... but the triggers are subtly different.

The cool thing is that it's all pure coop. No forming a group... just participate. No kill stealing... no ninja looting (yes, there is looting the dead mobs)... people helping each other out by reviving them / rezzing them (everyone can rez), and the rewards for the event are automatically doled out to everyone at the end of the event, depending on your participation level... (Gold, Silver, Bronze) which gives EXP, Karma, and Gold (The latter two being currency).

Verno wrote on May 1, 2012, 09:00:I'm curious, what are the events and stuff like? Is it generic kill mobs type stuff or is there a bit more variety? I'm having a hard time imagining someone doing more than the Rift style crap but would love to hear if ANet went any further creatively in quest design.

Most events could be categorized as1: Kill a wandering boss2: Invade a monster camp, kill them and take over3: Invade a monster camp and smash their stuff/rescue people4: Escort5: Defend a human camp from waves of attackers6: Defend a finite set of objectives from being killed/stolen/kidnapped in an attack7: Collect a bunch of items from monsters or world objects

But I think if that's all you're seeing it as, you'll have a hard time understanding what's compelling in the game. Taking a fort from the centaur feels different than smashing up an ogre camp. Defeating a huge flame golem feels different than a rampaging giant boar. You're in a new area with new enemies and a new story and personally, that let me get past the underlying coding and enjoy the experience. I wasn't thinking, "oh another #2," I was thinking, "how do I beat this centaur chief?" and "I wonder what will happen once we take the camp."

I don't think it's for everyone, but it's definitely a significant improvement over any static or public quest system I've seen.

Teddy wrote on May 1, 2012, 03:01:Listening to the press that have attended every beta weekend thus far, they've said that the XP requirement to level has been tuned differently each weekend, so they're clearly still playing with it. The first weekend, they said they leveled way too fast and hadn't even completed half the hearts in an area before being high enough to move on. The second one, they said was WAY too slow and you had to grind to get to the appropriate level for new content, the most recent one was still too slow, but closer, according to them.

I found myself having to repeat a few events, most notably escorts that seem to repeat too frequently just to get to level to enter the next zone. They definitely need to tune it. For my part, I don't understand their attempt to get you to do every heart/event in a zone before being high enough to move on. The game down-levels you to whatever level content you're working on, so even if I get to level 20 by the time I've finished everything in the level 1-15 zone, I'll still only be level (16) entering the 16-25 zone. If the point of the game is to experience the content, then leveling faster than the pace of content isn't really a detriment to that. It would let people pick and choose what events they want to complete, and who they want to help.

On the other hand, as others have pointed out, there's a TON of content. If you're too low level to continue on in your current area without grinding or repeating stuff, take the Asura gates to either of the other 2 starting zones (or other 4 once Asura and Sylvari are in) and there's a ton of level appropriate stuff to do that you haven't already experienced to get you that level or two, then you can hop back to your home zone afterwards.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't think of that until the beta was pretty much over so I also repeated some stuff unnecessarily.

I'm curious, what are the events and stuff like? Is it generic kill mobs type stuff or is there a bit more variety? I'm having a hard time imagining someone doing more than the Rift style crap but would love to hear if ANet went any further creatively in quest design.

nin wrote on May 1, 2012, 07:30:Currently, adjusting the core clock speed of the GPU or CPU typically results in lower performance.

I read it but it contradicts itself. The game is CPU bound except when it isn't. The GPU doesn't matter except if you overclock it. Those statements make no sense. Most modern processors do native safe overclocking already. Generic beta disclaimer.

They obviously need to optimize the large scale pvp but general performance was surprisingly good even this early. I hate MMO games but this one was quite fun too, looking forward to it.

Ran fine for me too on a moderate machine, probably some driver or local computer problems.

Nope!

We are currently optimizing Guild Wars 2, making ongoing improvements to the game’s frame rate. Presently, the game is CPU-bound on most high-end systems, so lowering graphics settings or upgrading your video card may not have a large impact on performance.

Yep!

Makes sense then, I'm running an overclock right now and performance was great. Probably still a bunch of people with outdated drivers though, always is with every game release

Keep reading:

Currently, adjusting the core clock speed of the GPU or CPU typically results in lower performance.

Ran fine for me too on a moderate machine, probably some driver or local computer problems.

Nope!

We are currently optimizing Guild Wars 2, making ongoing improvements to the game’s frame rate. Presently, the game is CPU-bound on most high-end systems, so lowering graphics settings or upgrading your video card may not have a large impact on performance.

Yep!

Makes sense then, I'm running an overclock right now and performance was great. Probably still a bunch of people with outdated drivers though, always is with every game release

NKD wrote on Apr 30, 2012, 19:01:My opinion of the game hasn't changed much after playing again in this beta weekend, as an Elementalist. The leveling process felt a lot like a grind compared to other games. I felt like I was doing the same "dynamic" events over and over again just trying to get the XP and levels needed to move on to the next "heart", and eventually my next story quest.

Listening to the press that have attended every beta weekend thus far, they've said that the XP requirement to level has been tuned differently each weekend, so they're clearly still playing with it. The first weekend, they said they leveled way too fast and hadn't even completed half the hearts in an area before being high enough to move on. The second one, they said was WAY too slow and you had to grind to get to the appropriate level for new content, the most recent one was still too slow, but closer, according to them.

I found myself having to repeat a few events, most notably escorts that seem to repeat too frequently just to get to level to enter the next zone. They definitely need to tune it. For my part, I don't understand their attempt to get you to do every heart/event in a zone before being high enough to move on. The game down-levels you to whatever level content you're working on, so even if I get to level 20 by the time I've finished everything in the level 1-15 zone, I'll still only be level (16) entering the 16-25 zone. If the point of the game is to experience the content, then leveling faster than the pace of content isn't really a detriment to that. It would let people pick and choose what events they want to complete, and who they want to help.

On the other hand, as others have pointed out, there's a TON of content. If you're too low level to continue on in your current area without grinding or repeating stuff, take the Asura gates to either of the other 2 starting zones (or other 4 once Asura and Sylvari are in) and there's a ton of level appropriate stuff to do that you haven't already experienced to get you that level or two, then you can hop back to your home zone afterwards.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't think of that until the beta was pretty much over so I also repeated some stuff unnecessarily.

Yifes wrote on Apr 30, 2012, 21:40:Seriously? It ran well on low on my 4850. Only noticed any sort of stuttering in the WvW, which was still surprisingly playable with around ~50 people onscreen. That experience alone has me sold on this game.

Ran fine for me too on a moderate machine, probably some driver or local computer problems. Beta was a lot of fun, I don't normally like MMO games but this was a total blast. I won't be missing any other big releases this year.

I had a blast. After the initial hiccups the game ran great. Well good enough for me. It's not a FPS... yet I understand. People who have bleeding edge hardware still the game has a lot of slowdowns... I know it can be irritating.

I was very happy with what I saw. Not a revolution but an evolution of the genre. I can't remember having this much fun since the days of old playing Asheron's Call and then Dark Age of Camelot.

Krovven wrote on Apr 30, 2012, 20:03:Tried a friends GW2 beta very briefly this past weekend. It ran like crap on my aging machine,

It ran like crap on my cutting edge machine too, don't feel bad. I've actually never seen an MMO run this shitty by the time they got around to public testing. They need to do more than a little optimization, an overhaul seems more needed.

It's a known issue as it's running on the CPU atm.

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